Could Shallan’s lies help her be something more than a broken girl from rural Jah Keved? A girl who was, deep down, terrified that she had no idea what she was doing.
The cultists chanted softly, repeating the words of the leaders at the front.
“Our time has passed.”
“Our time has passed.”
“The spren have come.”
“The spren have come.”
“Give them our sins.”
“Give them our sins.…”
Yes … she could feel it. The freedom these people felt. It was the peace of surrender. They coursed down the street, proffering their torches and lanterns toward the sky, wearing the garb of spren. Why worry? Embrace the release, embrace the transition, embrace the coming of storm and spren.
Embrace the end.
Swiftspren breathed in their chants and saturated herself with their ideas. She became them, and she could hear it, whispering in the back of her mind.
Surrender.
Give me your passion. Your pain. Your love.
Give up your guilt.
Embrace the end.
Shallan, I’m not your enemy.
That last one stood out, like a scar on a beautiful man’s face. Jarring.
She came to herself. Storms. She’d initially thought that this group might lead her up to the revel on the Oathgate platform, but … she’d let herself be carried away by the darkness. Trembling, she stopped in place.
The others stopped around her. The illusion—the sprenlike tassels behind her—continued to stream, even when she wasn’t walking. There was no wind.
The cultists’ chanting broke off, and corrupted awespren exploded around several of their heads. Soot-black puffs. Some fell to their knees. To them—wrapped in streaming cloth, face obscured, ignoring wind and gravity—she would look like an actual spren.
“There are spren,” Shallan said to the gathered crowd, using Lightweaving to twist and warp her voice, “and there are spren. You followed the dark ones. They whisper for you to abandon yourselves. They lie.”
The cultists gasped.
“We do not want your devotion. When have spren ever demanded your devotion? Stop dancing in the streets and be men and women again. Strip off those idiotic costumes and return to your families!”
They didn’t move quickly enough, so she sent her tassels streaming upward, curling about one another, lengthening. A powerful light flashed from her.
“Go!” she shouted.
They fled, some throwing off their costumes as they went. Shallan waited, trembling, until she was alone. She let the glow vanish and shrouded herself in blackness, then stepped off the street.
When she emerged from the blackness, she looked like Veil again. Storms. She’d … she’d become one of them so easily. Was her mind so quickly corrupted?
She wrapped her arms around herself, trailing through streets and markets. Jasnah would have been strong enough to keep going with them until reaching the platform. And if these hadn’t been allowed up—most that wandered the streets weren’t privileged enough to join the feast—then she’d have done something else. Perhaps take the place of one of the feast guards.
Truth was, she enjoyed the thievery and feeding the people. Veil wanted to be a hero of the streets, like in the old stories. That had corrupted Shallan, preventing her from going forward with something more logical.
But she’d never been the logical one. That was Jasnah, and Shallan couldn’t be her. Maybe … maybe she could become Radiant and …
She huddled against a wall, arms wrapped around herself. Sweating, trembling, she went looking for light. She found it down a street: a calm, level glow. The friendly light of spheres, and with it a sound that seemed impossible. Laughter?
She chased it, hungry, until she reached a gathering of people singing beneath Nomon’s azure gaze. They’d overturned boxes, gathering in a ring, while one man led the boisterous songs.
Shallan watched, hand on the wall of a building, Veil’s hat held limply in her gloved safehand. Shouldn’t that laughter have been more desperate? How could they be so happy? How could they sing? In that moment, these people seemed like strange beasts, beyond her understanding.
Sometimes she felt like a thing wearing a human skin. She was that thing in Urithiru, the Unmade, who sent out puppets to feign humanity.
It’s him, she noticed absently. Wit’s leading the songs.
He hadn’t left her any more messages at the inn. Last time she’d visited, the innkeeper complained that he’d moved out, and had coerced her to pay Wit’s tab.
Veil pulled on her hat, then turned and trailed away down the small market street.
She turned herself back into Shallan right before she reached the tailor’s shop. Veil let go reluctantly, as she kept wanting to go track down Kaladin in the Wall Guard. He wouldn’t know her, so she could approach him, pretend to get to know him. Maybe flirt a little …
Radiant was aghast at that idea. Her oaths to Adolin weren’t complete, but they were important. She respected him, and enjoyed their time training together with the sword.
And Shallan … what did Shallan want again? Did it matter? Why bother worrying about her?
Veil finally let go. She folded her hat and coat, then used an illusion to disguise them as a satchel. She layered an illusion of Shallan and her havah over the top of her trousers and shirt, then strolled inside, where she found Drehy and Skar playing cards and debating which kind of chouta was best. There were different kinds?
Shallan nodded to them, then—exhausted—started up the steps. A few hungerspren, however, reminded her that she hadn’t saved anything for herself from the day’s thievery. She put away her clothing, then hiked down to the kitchen.
Here she found Elhokar drinking from a single cup of wine into which he’d dropped a sphere. That red-violet glow was the room’s only light. On the table before him was a sheet of glyphs: names of the houses he had been approaching, through the parties. He’d crossed out some of the names, but had circled the others, writing down numbers of troops they might be able to provide. Fifty armsmen here, thirty there.
He raised the glowing cup to her as she gathered some flatbread and sugar. “What is that design on your skirt? It … seems familiar to me.”
She glanced down. Pattern, who usually clung to her coat, had been replicated in the illusion on the side of her havah. “Familiar?”
Elhokar nodded. He didn’t seem drunk, just contemplative. “I used to see myself as a hero, like you. I imagined claiming the Shattered Plains in my father’s name. Vengeance for blood spilled. It doesn’t even matter now, does it? That we won?”
“Of course it matters,” Shallan said. “We have Urithiru, and we defeated a large army of Voidbringers.”
He grunted. “Sometimes I think that if I merely insist long enough, the world will transform. But wishing and expecting is of the Passions. A heresy. A good Vorin worries about transforming themselves.”
Give me your passion.…
“Have you any news about the Oathgate or the Cult of Moments?” Elhokar asked.